Paraphrasing Techniques for Improving Students’ Speaking Ability

Abstract

The study aims are to describe the significance effect of paraphrasing techniques teaching in improving students speaking ability at Muhammadiyah Boarding School Pleret Yogyakarta and to know which type of paraphrasing technique is most used by the students. The study is conducted using quasi-experimental research with 22 students as samples. The experimental group was taught using paraphrasing techniques (using synonyms, change word class, change word order, and change active to passive or vice versa) and the control group was not given a treatment. The data is collected by recording the students’ paraphrasing personal recount text in speaking activity. The instruments used are IELTS Speaking band descriptor, taxonomy of paraphrasing types and collected data is analyzed descriptively and adopting independent t-test using SPSS version 22. The results show the treatment of the teaching paraphrasing techniques improves the students’ speaking ability. It proved that the p-value (sig. 2-tailed: 0.001) was smaller than 0.025. Thereafter, the most paraphrasing technique used by the students was using synonymous words where it was applied 115 times (64 %) from all the students/participants. These findings have assisted in building an app suitable for teaching speaking. Keywords: